Good news for crybabies, because tears actually contain happy hormones!

Audit expert: Liu Dongbao

Chief Physician of Ophthalmology Department, Shenyang Red Cross Hospital

"If you feel bad, don't hold it in. Just cry if you want to." "It will feel better if you cry."...

Source: pixabay

Whenever we feel depressed, we often hear such consolation. When we are sad, tears seem to be a natural antidote to comfort the soul. Many people believe that crying can help relieve emotions and restore calmness. So is this consensus a collective illusion or is it really scientifically based? When we are deeply in love, does crying more help relieve emotions and be beneficial to physical and mental health?

Let’s explore the mystery behind tears today!

The composition and function of tears

To understand the effects of crying on the body, we first need to understand a little bit about the eyes and tears.

The cornea of ​​our eyes is covered by a layer of tear film, which is divided into three layers: oily film, aqueous humor, and mucus layer. The middle layer of aqueous humor can keep the surface of the eyeball moist, and the liquid that flows out is tears.

The three-layer structure of the tear film Source: Baidu Encyclopedia

Tears are slightly acidic, more than 98% of them are water, and contain small amounts of inorganic salt ions, proteins and other substances.

Studies have found that tears also contain high concentrations of manganese and a large amount of sodium chloride. The concentration of manganese is even higher than that in human blood and sweat. Manganese, as an essential trace element for the human body, plays an important role in bone growth and development, the structure and function of the central nervous system, endocrine regulation, and especially emotional changes.

Source: Shanghai Science Popularization Network

People who work in manganese mining and smelting at home and abroad have experienced emotional instability due to excessive accumulation of manganese in their bodies. This is because manganese participates in the chemical reaction of people's emotional activities, making them unable to control their emotions, and tears are the only way for the human body to excrete manganese. The human body can excrete excess manganese in the body through tears, thereby maintaining emotional stability and physical and mental health.

In addition, tears also contain lysozyme , an antimicrobial substance that can dissolve bacterial cell walls, resist pathogenic microorganisms and protect the eyes. In addition, the immunoglobulins and soluble proteins in tears have antibacterial effects, which can inhibit bacterial growth to a certain extent, clean the eyeball, promote normal cell metabolism, and prevent tumor formation.

The tears we usually talk about are actually divided into two types: reflex tears and emotional tears.

As the name suggests, reflex tears are tears formed due to conditioned reflex, such as tears caused by onion stimulation or sand in the eyes; while emotional tears are tears shed when people are happy, sad, scared, and other emotions.

Source: pixabay

William Frey II, a professor of biochemistry in the United States, found in an experiment that the protein content of emotional tears is 24% higher than that of other tears. These proteins also have the effect of "natural analgesics". In addition, emotional tears also contain a large amount of hormones, such as adrenocorticotropic hormone and enkephalin. These "happy hormones" can relieve physical and emotional discomfort to a certain extent. In addition, crying is also an unusual exercise involving multiple systems in the human body, such as the respiratory system, circulatory system, and nervous system. It relaxes emotions and muscles, thereby relaxing people, regulating and stabilizing emotions.

So when you feel uncomfortable and depressed, you might as well let yourself cry, vent your emotions through tears, and at the same time excrete excess toxins from your body. This will help relieve mental stress, relax your mental state, thereby reducing the risk of illness and ensuring physical and mental health.

The harm of prolonged tears

Although crying can help us find an outlet to vent our emotions and relieve repressed emotions, crying for a long time may make people exhausted and even reduce their immunity.

Prolonged tearing can cause eye congestion and edema. At the same time, emotional instability may cause increased intraocular pressure and blood pressure, causing changes in the blood vessels in the fundus, thereby affecting vision. In severe cases, it may even induce glaucoma.

In addition, being in sadness for a long time may affect the body's secretion of hormones such as dopamine and adrenaline, thereby reducing the excitability of the central nervous system and inducing a series of mental illnesses.

Therefore, if you are really upset, crying is a suitable way to vent, but you should also try to avoid crying for a long time. This will not only play a positive role in venting emotions, but also will not cause excessive harm to the body.

Source: pixabay

If you really can't control the urge to cry, you need to first think about your true emotional needs deep in your heart, face and respect your current feelings, try to use psychological knowledge to soothe your heart, learn to objectively examine yourself and face reality, learn to change emotions by adjusting your cognition, understand how your emotions arise, and then try to channel them, rather than being overwhelmed and controlled by strong emotions and damaging your physical and mental health.